Artist: Revengine
Title: II
Type: E.P.
Label: Self Release
Revengine’s second E.P, imaginatively titled ‘II’ is a misleading affair. The logo and artwork on the CD gives a first impression that the 4 songs enclosed will be heavy, brutal and most likely offensive to small children, the elderly and Christians. A quick read up on their press release tells me; “We come from Finland and we play multi-flavoured arse kicking rock with attitude.” So settling down to give this one a spin, I was disappointed to find that it wasn’t particularly heavy at all, or brutal. It was however, many flavours of arse. What you’ve got here is 4 songs, all with completely different styles, and none of them sound finished.
First track ‘F(r)iend’ is a plodding rock ballad in the style of Nickelback or Theory of a Deadman. Singer Antti Jokiranta even adopts a Chad Kroeger style whiny drawl throughout, and whilst musically competent, they barely raise the level above your average pub band. Things change quite drastically on ‘Disco BS’ as they adopt a rock take on a ‘funky disco beat’ with Antti this time attempting a James Hetfield vocal style which really does not suit the song. There is a depressing lack of distortion on the guitars, giving a twee feel to something that sounds like it was originally conceived with a lot more aggression. The drummer also manages to go out of time on at least two occasions. That being said, there is something about this track, it is still reasonably catchy and with some better production, a few tweaks and some more passion all round, it could have turned out to be something promising. As it stands though, it’s a throwaway track. ‘The Wait’ has Jokiranta again trying his Hetfield voice, occasionally morphing into Josey Scott if he were drunk or sedated. This track actually makes ‘F( r )iend’ sound positively thrashy; it’s bloody awful in fact. ‘Yet Here We Are’ is another ponderously slow track that moves into a slightly heavier chorus. This one shows a bit more promise than the other songs, the songwriting just showing a little bit of cohesion. The singing is better too, but then that’s like saying a punch in the face is better than a kick in the knackers. It’s definitely the stand out track from a poor bunch.
Someone once said that Scandinavian bands always sound so good because alcohol is too expensive and half of the year it’s too dark and cold to go out, so the only things to do are learn an instrument and practice lots, or to screw. On that basis it sounds like these guys must be spending far more time doing the latter. There is so much wrong with this I almost feel sorry for them. The music is amateurish, the songs are completely bland and derivative, and they can’t even seem to decide on a style apart from slow. They say their music offers “31 flavours instead of one”, and whilst I get what they are trying to do, to stick with a cooking analogy, if you take a whole bunch of random ingredients, throw them all together in a haphazard manner and undercook them, the end result will make you ill. This is what we have here. Aural vomit.
http://www.revengineband.com
http://www.myspace.com/revengineband
Lee Kimber
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